* He played in the second game of the two-game edition, going 0–3 in a game ended by rain after nine innings even though the score remained tied 1–1.
Johnny was so quiet in the clubhouse that his teammates nicknamed him “Gabby.”* “If he says ‘Hello,’ he sounds like he’s chattering,” legendary Los Angeles Times columnist Jim Murray observed. Gabby did socialize with his teammates, often playing cards, though he preferred the solitude of the cinema and sometimes watched four movies in a single day. When he decided to speak, he often displayed a sharp wit. For instance, he likened the spitball to “a drunk passing out suddenly and sprawling on the floor.” He didn’t have to say much to pitchers: a glare or a smile let them know his thoughts. He often used his humor to settle them. When Larry Miller made his major league debut in Cincinnati, he was understandably nervous. He got two quick outs on pop-ups then gave up a double and a home run. The Reds’ next batter, Frank Robinson, smacked a vicious line drive back through the box that carried to the center field wall. Roseboro called time out, sauntered to the mound where the rattled Miller feared his major league career might end with his debut, and said, “I think you’re playing Robinson a little too close.”
* Pitcher Roger Craig, Roseboro’s teammate from 1957 to 1961, claims he came up with the nickname, but Roseboro credits Dodgers pitcher Ed Roebuck with dubbing him “Gabby.”
Another time in Philadelphia, Roseboro and Dodgers pitcher Dick Egan, who had been struggling, watched Richie Allen take batting practice. The Phillies’ star slugger, who had a fondness for booze, seemed so inebriated he bumped into both sides of the narrow door before making it into the batting cage. But then he awed Egan with the way he smashed balls into the bleachers. Later, with Los Angeles losing, Egan was called on in relief with Allen on deck. “I was freaking out and grabbed Roseboro,” Egan said. “What about Richie?!”
“Don’t worry,” Gabby replied calmly. “He’s probably sober by now.”
Sure enough, Allen grounded out to third.
By 1962 Roseboro had established himself as one of the best defensive catchers in the majors and a team leader. Not the rah-rah sort, but the type that motivated teammates to play their best with his own consistent and competitive play. “John did everything possible to win,” Ken McMullen, his teammate for three years in Los Angeles, said. “He expected everyone to play the game with passion and dedication as he did.” They respected Roseboro, never wanting to let him down. “I loved the guy—as a person, friend, and teammate,” Stan Williams reflected after Roseboro’s death, echoing the unanimous sentiment of his teammates. “John was hard not to like.” He played to win, and so did they. “Winning is the aim,” Roseboro wrote. “Winning games, not sportsmanship trophies for fair play.”
The fastest catcher in the league and regularly the top base stealer among them, Roseboro was part of “the Swift Set,” the Dodgers quintet rounded out by Maury Wills, Jim Gilliam, Tommy Davis, and Willie Davis, so named for their swiftness on the base paths (Wills swiped a record 104 bases in 1962 and Roseboro stole 12 in 15 tries, the most by a National League catcher since 1928). “Rivals in haberdashery, partners in shower stall three-part harmony, walkie-talkie radio hams and strummers of eclectic musical instruments, these five friends (and occasional enemies) kept the Dodgers clubhouse rollicking throughout the 1962 season,” David Plaut writes in his book Chasing October: The Dodgers-Giants Pennant Race of 1962. Sports Illustrated noted, “There was fierce competition among them for the distinction of being the best-dressed Dodger.” Vin Scully, the voice of the Dodgers, singled out Roseboro with his Brooks Brothers suits as “the Iviest guy in the league.” Jim Murray chimed in: “He is as fastidious as Queen Elizabeth. When he comes on the field, even his baseball shoes have a high enough shine to shave by. He buffs them between innings.”
The five black men on the Dodgers felt the solidarity of race, understanding the subtle prejudices among teammates. “We had ways of checking out white players,” Wills said. “If a guy smoked, you could offer him a puff of your cigarette. Or you could offer somebody a bit of your sandwich or a swig of your drink. The guys who accepted were all right. The guys who were prejudiced would rather die than take a puff or a bite or a swallow.” Though there were white guys who wouldn’t share a cigarette with one of the Swift Set, the Dodgers didn’t suffer the racial divide that other teams like the Giants did. Perhaps because they had had a head start on integration with Jackie Robinson’s debut in 1947, the Dodgers felt more like a family with its occasional squabbles but overriding sense of unity.
Roseboro had emulated Campanella in his catching style, showing his target the same way and calling pitches in a like manner. He also mimicked Campy when it came to taking a stand—or not—on racial issues. Much as he chafed under the taunts and attitudes and segregation of baseball and the country as a whole, Johnny absorbed the prejudice rather than take pains to dismantle it. That was Campy. One time when the team stopped to eat on the road coming back from a game, the restaurant management insisted the black players sit behind a screen in the back of the room. Had Jackie Robinson been there, he would have led the march out. Campanella, though, accepted the terms and ate his meal. “He was sort of our leader, but he was not a man of action where race was concerned,” Johnny wrote. He could say the same about himself.
There was plenty of overt and covert racism inside and outside of baseball at the time. Jeri often didn’t go to spring training with her husband because there was nowhere for a black woman to stay in Vero Beach. When she did go she could not sit with the white players’ wives in the segregated stadiums of the South. Baseball cards depicted black players like Roseboro as white in their back-side cartoons, the color of Crayola’s peach-hued flesh tone, as though Topps and others had only one color in mind for ballplayers, which was typical of the insensitivity of the day. One time in Houston, Roseboro crossed the street against a red light. A traffic cop said nothing to the white guys who crossed in front of him but yelled at Johnny, “Back on the curb, boy.”
“What about them?’ Johnny said, gesturing to the white guys.
“I’m not talking to them,” the white cop replied. “I’m talking to you, boy.”
Johnny sized up the old, doughy officer. He could drop him with one punch but considered the consequences of doing so. Johnny stepped back to the curb.
“That’s where the hate comes from,” he wrote later. “I don’t hold on to hate, but I know where it’s at.”
He sympathized with those fighting for civil rights. He could understand their motivation. But he wasn’t ready to join them. Shortly after the 1961 baseball season opened, the Freedom Riders had taken to the roads. Hundreds of black and white college students and supporters filled buses that traveled along interstates throughout the South to test new federal laws that banned segregation at rest areas and other public transportation facilities. The nightly news featured images of the resistance they encountered, showing young people with faces bloodied by angry mobs and one bus torched by attackers. Plenty of Americans pushed back on the drive for civil rights. One hundred years after the Civil War, the country remained divided on racial issues, though Roseboro was not one to take sides openly in the debate. He was more likely to take his seat quietly at the back of the city bus than seek confrontation alongside the likes of the Freedom Riders.
Johnny found a way to come out of himself in front of the camera. The Dodgers’ move to Los Angeles had provided opportunities for several players to answer the call from nearby Hollywood. Over the years, Johnny had small parts in several films, including Geisha Boy, Get Fisk, and Experiment in Terror. He also made appearances on several television shows: Mr. Ed, Dragnet, Burke’s Law, and Marcus Welby, M.D. He liked doing those appearances, but they did not translate into lucrative endorsements. Jeri enjoyed the chance to hobnob with Hollywood stars. She worked on John Kennedy’s 1960 presidential campaign with the wives of Milton Berle, Nat King Cole
, and Steve Allen. She also brought Johnny to parties at their houses. After being dragged onto the dance floor and embarrassed by another player’s wife, Johnny told Jeri, “I’m not going to any more of these goddamn parties.”
The Dodgers provided plenty of entertainment for Hollywood in 1962, winning 102 games their first season in their new stadium in Chavez Ravine. They held first place for 95 days, up until the final day, which saw the season end in a tie with the Giants. While federal troops occupied Ole Miss to squelch the uprising over James Meredith’s matriculation, Los Angeles and San Francisco began a three-game playoff. They split the first two games, each team winning at home, but the Dodgers faltered in their 165th game of the year and lost 6–4. Though Juan Marichal declared that his team’s comeback resulted from divine intervention, the Dodgers suffered more of a hellish dejection. They locked the press out of the clubhouse, and instead of celebrating with the champagne on ice, they used it to take the edge off the agony of defeat. Roseboro didn’t imbibe. He simply dressed, walked past the reporters without a word, and drove home. He had played a fine season, which included a home run in the All-Star Game, but the team’s collapse soured it all. “It was a very long winter, having to explain what happened to us,” Roseboro wrote.
The Dodgers collectively may not have played as well the following season, but they fared better, thanks in large part to Sandy Koufax with his MVP, Cy Young Award–winning summer. He won 25 of 30 decisions, allowed fewer than two runs per game, and led the majors in strikeouts, shutouts, and victories. Roseboro caught his second no-hitter (he had caught Koufax’s first no-hitter in 1962) against the Giants on May 11 when Koufax bested Marichal. Roseboro had become Koufax’s catcher of choice. “With him out there, I felt like I was never alone,” Koufax said. They worked so well together that they sometimes went four or five games without Sandy shaking off one of Rosey’s signs. Johnny shared this telepathy with other Dodgers pitchers. He didn’t even have to use signs with Roger Craig, whom he knew so well he just gave the target and Craig tried to hit it. The entire pitching staff had come to trust Johnny’s sharpened awareness of their strengths and the liabilities of the batters they faced. “He knew every pitcher and what they were capable of doing,” said Ron Perranoski, Roseboro’s teammate with Los Angeles and later Minnesota. “He seldom came out to the mound. I had to call him out if I needed him. And then he’d crack a little joke to take some of the pressure off.”
Despite Johnny’s good relations with the Dodgers’ white pitchers, racial tensions in the country continued to worsen. In May Koufax’s no-no over Marichal was overshadowed by the images playing that week on television. Birmingham commissioner of public safety Bull Connor had ordered the use of fire hoses and police dogs to turn back people marching for desegregation in Alabama’s largest and most segregated city. The scenes of water jets blasting the shirts off the backs of bystanders and German shepherds chomping on children caused international outrage. President John Kennedy called the action “shameful.” The day of Koufax’s no-hitter, someone bombed the hotel of Martin Luther King Jr., who had been held a month earlier in a Birmingham jail. By the time King delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington late that summer, it was clear that the racial conflict in America loomed much larger than the national pastime’s annual fall classic, though that did not diminish interest in baseball.
When the Dodgers won the pennant to face the Yankees, Brooklyn fans delighted that dem bums would return to New York to play in the World Series. The Dodgers players, on the other hand, felt trepidation rather than nostalgia. The Yankees were two-time defending champions and had won six of their seven matchups against the Dodgers. Simply practicing in Yankee Stadium intimidated Roseboro. “I can’t ever recall feeling as tense as I did during our off-day workout in that big ballpark,” he wrote. “You don’t want to fuck up, of course. There’s always that. But there was more than that this time.”
Maybe his nerves put some extra pop in his bat. His first time up, in the second inning, he faced Yankee ace Whitey Ford with two runners on. Ford hung a curve that Roseboro clobbered over the right field fence. With Koufax striking out a World Series record 15, Johnny’s dinger was enough to beat the Yankees 5–2. “His three-run homer off Whitey Ford early in the first game of the World Series got the Dodgers off to a flying start, and they never looked back as they swept four straight from the Yankees,” George T. Davis wrote in the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner. Roseboro had delivered several clutch hits over the season, including a grand slam in Pittsburgh in September that helped the team stay in first place. Dodgers general manager Buzzie Bavasi gave Roseboro the credit he often didn’t receive: “I think John Roseboro was more valuable to us in 1963 than anytime, although he hit for a higher average the two previous seasons. He’s an unsung hero of the club.”
When a reporter asked him later if the World Series home run was the most memorable moment of his career, Roseboro said in typical fashion, “No. My biggest thrill was receiving that check after the World Series.”
Bavasi gave Roseboro a $3,000 raise for the 1964 season, upping his salary to $30,000. His manager paid him with praise. “Nobody can block a plate any better than Roseboro or get away faster on an opponent’s bunt,” Walt Alston said. “Roseboro can run faster than Campy, throw as hard and hit with as much power—though not as often. He’s coming into his own.”
After five and a half seasons in the majors, Roseboro had not erased Campanella from the memory of Dodgers fans, but he had quieted his critics and contented them with his play. He appreciated Alston’s affirmation and Bavasi’s backing. That spring, though, he had developed calcium deposits in his knee, an occupational hazard, and the team physician made him sit out part of spring training. Nobody accused him of jaking, because nobody played through more pain than Rosey. He shrugged off busted fingers, broken toenails, bruises everywhere from foul tips, and constant knee pain with humor. He figured he took about three foul tips a game, on average “one bleeder and two stingers.” He knew they were coming. “The only thing I don’t know is which finger. It gets to be kind of a game, like guessing what the dealer has in blackjack.” His job required so much soaking afterward in the clubhouse whirlpool that teammates called it “the USS Roseboro.” “Seventeen years in this business, I’ve never seen anybody like Roseboro,” Dodgers trainer Doc Anderson said. “And I’ve seen some tough catchers. I don’t know how he takes the beating he does.”
He won respect and a reputation for durability and toughness. “Roseboro plays when 90 percent of the ballplayers couldn’t,” Alston said. “He’ll get hit on the shoulder point with a foul tip and won’t even rub it. He’s absolutely fearless.” Pitcher Joe Moeller, whose ball moved so much it was hard for Roseboro to catch, commented, “He had probably the highest threshold for pain of any person I knew. He would take a foul tip off his finger, look down at it, swear at me, and walk off the field with his finger completely covered in blood then return the next inning.”
Roseboro was behind the plate on Opening Day despite the pain in his knee, which would keep him from taking batting practice all season and had to be drained regularly. In July a foul tip caught him on the middle finger of his throwing hand and tore the flesh back to the knuckle. Los Angeles Times columnist Jim Murray said the finger looked like “a peeled banana.” Roseboro took 15 stitches at the hospital but was the first one at the ballpark the next day. Alston sent him home. “He’ll be back before almost anyone else would be,” Dodgers trainer Bill Buhler said. “He can stand more pain than any man I know.” Sportswriter Bob Hunter of the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner added, “While John sustains an inordinate number of injuries, he recovers so rapidly that his durability has become almost a legend.”
Gabby’s toughness was most evident in plays at the plate. “There was no question that John Roseboro was the boss,” Bavasi said. “He had more courage than any catcher I ever saw. On a close play at home, nobody’d ever score because
he’d block the plate with his entire body. He was the Rock of Gibraltar.”
Unfazed by the contact, the former linebacker crouched low and hit runners so that they remembered it. One collision with Orlando Cepeda knocked the Giants’ star out with a knee injury. “He was trying to hurt me, so I hurt him,” Roseboro wrote. “I hit him with a cross-body block, caught his leg and almost broke it.” When the Cardinals’ Daryl Spencer tried to take him out, Roseboro sent Spencer somersaulting. “He lit on his butt and bounced a couple of times,” Johnny wrote. When Cincinnati pitcher Jim Brosnan tried to run over Roseboro, he failed. “He hurled himself at me, and I hit him in the middle and raised him into a full flip and he landed flat on his back with a hell of a jolt,” Roseboro recalled.
His ruggedness in blocking the plate became legendary. “He is so strong that a base runner would just as soon charge a moving streetcar as John Roseboro,” Murray wrote. “Where most players block the plate, Roseboro gets the ball and charges up the line like [Los Angeles Rams All-Pro linebacker] Les Richter. It sometimes delays the game while they sweep up the kayoes. They had to unscrew Julian Javier’s neck one night last year when he hit the Roseboro shins and his head suddenly hit his shoulders.”
Roseboro was unapologetic for his rough play. “Between those white lines it was a war zone,” he said. “You can say, ‘Hi, how are the wife and kids?’ before the game, but once it starts, I’m gonna try to beat your butt and you’re gonna try to beat mine. I can’t become intimidated or leery of being hurt. I got a reputation as a guy who would hurt other guys, and they’d come into me cautiously, which was the ideal situation for me.”
Roseboro’s reputation also provided security for his pitchers and gave them confidence to pitch effectively inside. “I never worried about knocking someone down because I knew they would never get to the mound with John behind the plate,” Moeller said.
The Fight of Their Lives Page 8